Baking
by tobinfic
Summary: Darcy/Steve, based on the prompt "It's been a long time since anybody baked for him".


He'd been coming back from the gym when he'd heard the startled scream from the kitchen area from the floor above. While the super-soldier serum had made huge and obvious changes to his physique, other parts of his body had been affected too.

His hearing had gone from average to amazing; he could hear conversations through the loud roars of the quinjet taking off, he could hear exactly what Natasha whispered to Clint during the noisy explosions that seemed to be in every movie they watched on Movie Night and he could hear the panicked scream of a woman in distress through several feet of whatever the hell it was that Stark used to build the tower.

He sprinted for the elevator, where Jarvis had it ready and waiting for him.

"Captain Rogers, I don't believe…" Jarvis began, but it was too late, as the elevator doors slid open almost immediately after they'd shut, depositing Steve on the correct floor.

Steve took off towards the kitchen through the large open plan living/dining area, snatching up one of the new shield prototypes that Stark was playing around with from where it was currently being used as some kind of Lazy Susan on the dining table. Condiments went flying as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, shield held defensively in front of his body. He skidded to a halt on some kind of sticky cake batter, slipped, and ended up smack on his ass on the floor.

"Hi," sighed Darcy. "Did you break your ass too?"

"No," he said, wincing as his coccyx readjusted. "Are you hurt?" he asked anxiously as he took in the sight in front of him. Darcy had moved into the tower when Jane Foster did, and split her time between helping Jane in the lab and helping a recovering Coulson triage his paperwork. She was spunky and vivacious, and other adjectives that people probably hadn't used since the forties. Statuesque, too, which he found impossible to ignore.

"Just my pride," Darcy reassured him. "Although I bet I'm going to have some beautiful bruises."

She rubbed absently at her backside, encountered a handful of the same cake batter that was all over his pants and grimaced as she flicked it from her hand onto the floor.

Steve tried not to think about Darcy's backside, and failed miserably.

"What happened?" he asked as he took in broken crockery, cracked eggshells, a pool of milk and a very downhearted Dummy, who was sitting in the corner of the kitchen and looking as sad as a giant robot with no face could.

Darcy bit her lip and looked at him nervously.

"I was baking a cake," she said, not quite meeting his eyes. "Only I'm really bad at baking, and I thought that maybe Dummy could help me."

Dummy made a sad chirrup and shook his…hand? Hook? Pincer? Steve didn't know what to call it, back and forth in the universal gesture for "No".

"As you can see, it wasn't exactly an unqualified success," Darcy said. "Although," she continued, looking at the robot, "totally not your fault, dude. I'm the one with the opposable thumbs, and I'm awful."

Steve looked at the carnage in the kitchen and made some inspired guesses.

"Dummy dropped the carton of milk," he said, "you slipped, and the bowl of cake batter broke on the floor."

"Pretty close," Darcy said. "It was the eggs, not the milk. I knocked the carton off the counter as I slipped. Then I managed to nail Captain America with what should have been a chocolate sponge."

She looked so miserable sitting there in the wreckage of her baking that Steve just couldn't stand it any more. The Darcy he knew was confident and outgoing. He reached forward and wiped a smear of batter from her cheek with his thumb.

"Chocolate cake," he said with a smile. "My favourite."

It was. One thing that the future had that the past didn't was the huge variety of food available. While some of the more lurid junk food was never going to be to his taste, he had a huge sweet tooth and he'd been very taken with chocolate cake, a luxury that he'd never had while growing up.

"I know," Darcy said, going a little pink around the edges in a way that Steve thought was adorable. "Agent Coulson said at work that tomorrow was going to be six months since you woke up, so I thought I'd make you a cake to celebrate."

She looked around at the mess.

"I don't know what I was thinking," she said, clearly embarrassed. "I've got no experience at this sort of thing. I'm definitely a take-out or microwave sort of girl."

Steve couldn't help it. The grin broke out on his face before he could stop it.

"You were making me a chocolate cake?" he said. "Darcy, that's…"

"Yeah, stupid, I know," Darcy said quickly, looking away.

"No," he said firmly. "I was going to say, that's wonderful. I can't remember the last time somebody baked for me. Probably my mom."

The look of embarrassment fell from Darcy's pretty face, and it was replaced by one of warmth.

"My mom is a great cook," Darcy said. "My dad, not so much. I must get my mouth from my mom and my culinary skills from my dad."

"It's a great mouth," Steve said without thinking. To cover her embarrassment, and his, he stuck the thumb that had the smear of cake batter on it in his mouth and licked it. He did his best not to wince, but he clearly didn't succeed.

Darcy's great mouth quirked into a smile.

"But not great cake?"

"It's not bad for a first attempt," he said loyally and he was rewarded with one of her fabulous smiles.

"Tell you what," she said. "Let's get cleaned up, and then I'll take you out to buy a slice of real chocolate cake."

"Alright," he agreed. "But I'm buying."

He stood and extended a hand down to her.

"I suppose I should start an argument with you about the women's movement and financial independence," she said, putting her much smaller hand in his. "But I'm feeling a bit of an idiot, and having a hot guy buy me cake sounds like a really good idea right now."

"You can buy the cake next time," Steve said bravely. "Uh, that is, if you want. Or if there is a next time."

Darcy moved towards him, her usual sexy wiggle hampered by a slight skid on some rogue batter. She ended up in his arms quite abruptly, but Steve wasn't complaining about the arrangement.

"Usually I get a kiss before I decide whether there's going to be a second date," she said quietly, but with no little amount of courage. She looked him with a slight hint of challenge in her blue eyes.

He'd never been able to resist a challenge.


End file.
